It is estimated by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that 29.9 million people age 12 and above in the U.S. and Canada played fantasy sports in 2007. A prior study by the FSTA showed 19.4 million people age 12 and above in the U.S. and Canada played fantasy sports in 2006 and 34.5 million people had ever played fantasy sports. A 2006 study showed that 22 percent of U.S. adult males 18 to 49 years old, with Internet access, played fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are estimated to have a $3-$4 Billion annual economic impact across the sports industry. Fantasy sports are also popular throughout the world with leagues for football (known as soccer in the United States), cricket and other non-U.S. based sports.
The concept of picking players and running a contest based on their year-to-date stats has been around since shortly after World War II, but was never organized into a widespread hobby or formal business. In 1960, Harvard University sociologist William Gamson started the “Baseball Seminar” where colleagues would form rosters that earned points on the players' final standings in batting average, RBI, ERA and wins. Gamson later brought the idea with him to the University of Michigan where some professors played the game. One professor playing the game was Bob Sklar, who taught an American Studies seminar which included Daniel Okrent, who learned of the game his professor played. At around the same time a league from Glassboro State College also formed a similar baseball league and had its first draft in 1976.
While those two leagues focused on baseball, it may be football that produced the first version of the hobby. The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League—began in the early '60s with eight teams and included a cadre of Raiders followers from the media and ticket office—including future league executives Scotty Stirling and Ron Wolf.
The landmark development in fantasy sports may have come with the development of Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980. Magazine writer/editor Daniel Okrent is typically credited with inventing it, the name coming from the New York City restaurant La Rotisserie Francaise where he and some friends used to meet and play. The game's innovation was primarily that “owners” in a Rotisserie league would draft teams from the list of active Major League Baseball players and would follow their statistics during the ongoing season to compile their scores. In other words, rather than using statistics for seasons whose outcomes were already known, the owners would have to make similar predictions about players' playing time, health, and expected performance that real baseball managers must make.
Because Okrent was a member of the media, other journalists, especially sports journalists, were introduced to the game. Many early players were introduced to the game by these sports journalists, especially during the 1981 Major League Baseball strike; with little else to write about, many baseball writers wrote columns about Rotisserie league. A Jul. 8, 1980 New York Times Article titled “What George Steinbrenner is to the American League, Lee Eisenberg is to the Rotisseries League” set off a media storm that led to stories about the league on CBS TV and other publications.
In March 1981, Dan Okrent wrote an essay about the Rotisserie League for Inside Sports called “The Year George Foster Wasn't Worth $36.” The article included the rules of the game. Founders of the original Rotisserie league published a guide book starting in 1984. In 1982, Ballantine published the first widely-available Bill James Abstract, which helped fuel fantasy baseball interest. Fantasy fans often used James' statistical tools and analysis as way to improve their teams. James was not a fantasy player and barely acknowledged fantasy baseball in his annual Abstract, but fantasy baseball interest is credited with his strong sales. Soon the hobby spread to other sports as well and by 1988, USA Today estimated that five hundred thousand people were playing.
In the few years after Okrent helped popularize fantasy baseball, a host of experts and business emerged to service the growing hobby. Okrent, based on discussions with colleagues at USA Today, credits Rotisserie League baseball with much of USA Today's early success, since the paper provided much more detailed box scores than most competitors and eventually even created a special paper, Baseball Weekly, that almost exclusively contained statistics and box scores.
Among the first high-profile experts were John Benson, Alex Patton and Ron Shandler. Benson became perhaps the most famous name in the business in the late 1980s, publishing his first book in 1989 and developing one of the first draft-software simulation programs. He had a 900 number at $2.50 per minute (or $150 per hour) in the mid 2000s.
Patton published his first book (“Patton's 1989 Fantasy Baseball League Price Guide”) in 1989 and his dollar values were included in USA Today Baseball Weekly's fantasy annual throughout the 1990s.
Ron Shandler published his “Baseball SuperSTATS” book in November 1986. At first the book wasn't meant for fantasy baseball fans, but rather as a book of Sabrmetric analysis.
But it wasn't just baseball that saw new businesses and growth. Fantasy Football Index became the first annual fantasy football guide in 1987. Fantasy Sports Magazine debuted in 1989 as the first regular publication covering more than one fantasy sport. Fantasy Football Weekly was launched in 1992 (later becoming Fanball.com) and had $2 million in revenue by 1999. A large number of companies emerged to calculate the stats for fantasy leagues and primarily sent results to subscribers via fax.
In 1993, USA Today included a weekly columnist on fantasy baseball, John Hunt, and he became perhaps the most visible writer in the industry before the rise of the Internet. Hunt started the first high-profile experts league, the League of Alternate Baseball Reality which first included notables as Peter Gammons, Keith Olbermann, and Bill James. The hobby continued to grow with 1 million to 3 million playing from 1991 to 1994.
But the seminal moment for the growth of fantasy sports was probably the rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s. The new technology lowered the barrier to entry to the hobby as stats could quickly be compiled online and news and information became readily available.
While several fantasy businesses had migrated to the Internet in the mid-1990s, the watershed era for online fantasy sports was arguably in 1997 when two web sites made their debut that forever changed the fantasy sports industry: Commissioner.com and RotoNews.com.
Commissioner.com launched in Jan. 1, 1997 and first offered a fantasy baseball commissioner service that changed the nature of fantasy sports with real-time stats, league message boards, daily updated box scores, and other features—all for $300 per league. Commissioner.com was sold to Sportsline late in 1999 for $31 million in cash and stock in a significant moment for the fantasy industry. The sale proved fantasy sports had grown from a mere hobby to big business. By 2003, Commissioner.com helped Sportsline generate $11 million from fantasy revenue. Commissioner.com is now currently the fantasy sports engine behind CBSsports.com's fantasy area (after Sportsline was sold to CBS).
RotoNews.com also launched in January 1997 and published its first player note on Feb. 16, 1997. RotoNews arguably revolutionized how fantasy sports information was presented on the web with the innovation of the “player notes” which are snippets of information every time a player got hurt, traded, benched or had a news event that impact his fantasy value—all search-able in real-time databases. Many sites today follow how RotoNews had a “news” and “analysis” element to each player update. Within two years, RotoNews had become one of the top ten most trafficked sports sites on the web, according to Media Metrix, ranking higher than such sites as NBA.com. RotoNews.com was sold to Broadband Sports in 1999 and later survived as Roto Wire.com.
It wasn't long before the larger media players got involved. Yahoo.com added fantasy sports in 1999 and offered most of its games for free—a largely new business model for fantasy sports. A trade group for the industry, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), was formed in 1998. Other entries during this era included Fanball.com, launched in 1999 by the parent company of Fantasy Football Weekly.
The first survey of the fantasy sports market in the U.S. in 1999 showed 29.6 million people age 18 and older played fantasy sports games. However, that figure was corrected in later years when it was determined the survey also included people who played NCAA bracket pools, which are not exactly fantasy sports (where individual players are picked).
There were also wide variations on business models. RotoNews.com launched the Web's first free “commissioner” service in 1998, quickly becoming the largest league management service. Yahoo.com became the first major media company to offer games for free in 1999. Due to the rising competition, Commissioner.com, which had charged as much as $300, offered its commissioner services for free starting with football in 2000. Two years later the trend reversed. Sportsline moved back to a pay model for commissioner services (which it largely still has today). TheHuddle.com, a free site since 1997, started to charge for information. RotoWire.com moved from a free model to a pay model in 2001 as well.
Despite the economic instability, fantasy sports started to become a mainstream hobby. In 2002, the NFL found that the average male surveyed b spent 6.6 hours a week watching the NFL on TV, but that fantasy sports players surveyed said they watched 8.4 hours of NFL per week. The NFL began running promotional television ads for fantasy football featuring current players for the first time. Previously, fantasy sports had largely been seen in a negative light by the major sports leagues.
Fantasy sports continued to grow with a 2003 FSTA survey showing 15 million people playing fantasy football and spending about $150 a year on average, making it a $1.5 billion industry. With the growth of the industry, fantasy has branched out to include non-sports related games focused on politics, celebrity gossip, movies, and reality TV. Notable games in these new categories include:
Fantasy Congress
Fantasy Mogul
As noted above, Fantasy baseball is one of the most popular fantasy sports. The following describes some variations of fantasy baseball in more depth. Note though that this is illustrative only. There are other methods of play and other fantasy sports.
Fantasy baseball is a game whereby fantasy game players manage imaginary baseball teams based on the real-life performance of baseball players, and compete against one another using those players' statistics to score points. It is probably the oldest form of fantasy sports, and arguably one of the most difficult and time-intensive due to the 162-game season of the MLB and the inconsistency of players.
Rotisserie Leagues and their descendants typically draft teams before the season begins (or very shortly thereafter). One approach is to hold an auction, whereby each owner or manager has a fixed amount of money to bid for players, and he must fill his team's roster within his budget. Another approach is to perform a serpentine system draft of available players until all teams are filled.
In either case, the skills of the fantasy team managers come into play in the “preseason” by their knowledge of the talent and ability to forecast the performance of Major League Baseball players and prospects for the coming season. Toward that end, they draw on a great variety of sources of information, including tout sheets by various forecasters, who predict the coming season's performance and the likely overall “value” (often in terms of auction dollars) of the Major League players.
Some leagues allow teams to keep some players from one year to the next, allowing savvy owners to build fantasy dynasties. These leagues are often referred to as “Keeper Leagues.” Keeper leagues typically have the same people in them, and owners keep their players, unless any off-season moves are made.
Many leagues allow teams to trade with each other during the season, as well as to replace players who get hurt or stop performing well with players from the pool of those who are not presently owned. However, some leagues prohibit such in-season “free agent” replacements, likely feeling that the game is more interesting when teams must live and die by the quality of their draft.
Also, at a league's discretion, there are typically only a limited number of free-agent moves that a fantasy team can make per season, and a team may not just “drop” all of their players if they are not progressing well during a season. The free-agent limit is also sometimes used to limit the so-called “pitch-and-ditch” tactic, a method of play in which a manager drafts a free agent pitcher with the intention of using him in only one game before replacing him with a pitcher who is scheduled to start the following day.
Many fantasy leagues are played for money. “Owners” ante up an entry fee at the beginning of the season and may also be charged for in-season activity such as trades and “free agent” acquisitions. The pool of money is collected and then distributed to the winner(s) at the end of the season. In some cases though, these are games in which the main reward is bragging rights or the participants' sense that they not only know how to assess baseball talent but also how to play the fantasy game in all of its dimensions including perhaps above all the selection of real baseball talent.
The statistics compiled by the players from each team are then ranked by category, and the team with the highest cumulative rank at the end of the season is determined to be the winner.
The original Rotisserie League used the following statistics:    team batting average (total hits divided by total at-bats)    total home runs    total runs batted in    total stolen bases    total wins    total saves    team earned run average (9 times total earned runs divided by total innings pitched, the lower the better)    team WHIP (total number of hits and walks allowed by pitchers divided by total innings pitched, the lower the better)
This is often called a “4×4” league (4 hitting stats and 4 pitching stats). Many leagues have adopted a “5×5” format, with runs and strikeouts (as a pitching statistic) added, respectively. Still other leagues have adopted a “6×6” format, most commonly adding OPS (OBP plus SLG), and holds. However, the “6×6” format does not yet have a standard or consensus set of categories to use. Other modifications to the rules include a minimum number of at-bats and innings pitched; teams that do not make the minimum were awarded last place in the respective categories.
An alternative head-to-head system provides that each team competes against only one team each week. At the end of the week, each team tallies wins and losses based on whatever criteria are set by the league. Below are three exemplary basic forms of head-to-head leagues (often referred to as “H2H”):    Head-to-Head Rotisserie: Wins, losses and ties are based on a team's performance in individual categories.    Head-to-Head One Win: Just like H2H Rotisserie, but the winner receives just one win, rather than one win for each category the team wins.    Head-to-Head Points: Stats accumulate points for each team (a Home Run/Stolen Base/etc. is worth a certain number of points), and the team with the most points at the end of the week is awarded a win. These leagues often take advantage of several other statistical categories, from outfield assists to quality starts.
Opponents are often dictated by a round-robin system. At the end of the season, the team with the best win-loss record is the victor. Many head-to-head leagues also feature playoffs over the last 3-4 weeks of the MLB regular season. A set number of teams make the “postseason” and play a single-elimination tournament to decide a victor.
While there is still a lot of enthusiasm for the present methods of fantasy sports gaming, a better, more challenging method of fantasy gaming would be advantageous.